Is Now the Time to Cut a Nuke Deal with Tehran? (Updated)

Tehran is now copping to a clandestine nuclear enrichment plant. But Ahmadinejad’s crew will likely try to excuse their secret-squirrel behavior, by claiming that the facility doesn’t really violate international atomic controls, because there hasn’t been any nuclear material introduced into the centrifuges. Don’t buy it, says MIT’s Geoffrey Forden. “There is a lot that can be done to train personnel etc. with enriching other isotopes like xenon or silicon. And training personnel is the important aspect right now,” he writes.

When the history of these secret facilities is known, I suspect that we will discover that they were started during the enrichment “suspension” that ended in 2006. We will also discover, I firmly believe, that [Iran’s disclosed enrichment facility at] Natanz has been used as a training center for workers for those covert facilities. That could explain why there has been a relatively slow start: they were constantly cycling new trainees through with the consequent inefficiencies new workers always introduce.

Paradoxically, Forden says that this is now the perfect time to cut a deal with Tehran, and set up a “multinational enrichment facility on Iranian soil.” It’s the “best way of ensuring that Iran cannot set up other secret enrichment facilities later. We obviously now know that ‘suspension’ is not the answer; they can use the freedom such inactivity gives their workers to setup new plants outside the prying IAEA inspectors’ view. We need to be with the Iranian scientists and engineers 24 hours a day, seven days a week to understand what they are doing.”

But any deal is going to require that Iran’s backers — in Moscow and in Beijing — show willingness to drop the hammer on their former pals. That’s something they’ve been extremely reluctant to do in the past. Have things really changed that much?

Marc Lynch thinks so. “The public disclosure puts Iran on the back foot ahead of those talks, and appears to have encouraged Russia to more seriously consider supporting such sanctions (that, plus the missile defense decision probably). This has to change Iranian calculations — indeed, the perception that the sanctions are now more likely is precisely what may lead the Iranians to make more concessions to avoid them,” he writes.

“And so you see the Obama mojo again. Look at the moves of the last month. He scraps the missile defense in Eastern Europe, pleasing Russia, and moves the focus of defense to the Mediterranean, pleasing Israel,” Andrew Sullivan adds. “And then, this morning… kapow!”

I do not believe sanctions are the best way to achieve results. Sanctions were used on a number of occasions against Iran but we have doubts about the results. Nevertheless when all instruments have been used and failed, one can use international legal sanctions. That is common…I think we should continue to promote positive incentives for Iran and at the same time push it to make all its programs transparent and open. Should we fail in that case, we’ll consider other options.

In the famous formula of “intent + capacity = threat,” intent is obviously the most difficult variable to determine with certainty. In the case of Iran, even if it’s impossible to state with certainty whether or not the political decision has been taken to acquire nuclear weapons, it is clear that the Iranian regime is determined to maintain a level of ambiguity regarding intent and opaqueness regarding capacity that precludes trust.

That’s why IAEA inspections have to be given the ability to determine capacity. Anything short of that represents Iran effectively acquiring a nuclear deterrent, whether or not it possesses a warhead.

Just how far to go to prevent such an outcome is still debatable. But if that is the goal, the negotiations now have a very clear effectiveness threshhold.